


From One Soldier to Another

by AmaryllisComplex



Category: Halo
Genre: F/M, Gen, Halo Glasslands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmaryllisComplex/pseuds/AmaryllisComplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The comfort that only a soldier can bring to another soldier. Naomi(010)/Vasily(Vaz) Beloi; Halo Glasslands/Thursday War.<br/>Vig One: 'Anger' -- '"I'm a soldier," she said at last, "I do what must be done. It doesn't matter how I feel about it." "That's bullshit," he told her, "of course it does."'</p>
            </blockquote>





	From One Soldier to Another

**Author's Note:**

> So! Hey there. :) This is my favorite couple from Karen Traviss' novels: Halo Glasslands and The Thursday War, which are in a series called 'Kilo-Five' in the Halo-verse, where it takes place after the Human-Covenant War.
> 
> Specific setting:  
> Book: Halo Glasslands  
> Takes Place: After Vaz reviews Naomi's file for her.  
> Summary: After telling Naomi about her file, Vaz finds that he can't accept her answer as to her reaction.

He was angry.

He'd gone in well aware that it would piss him off, but he'd done it anyway. He'd made her a promise; and he couldn't go back on it just because it would make him uncomfortable. She had a right to know; and she was entrusting him with deciding if it was worth knowing.

It was a level of trust that he found himself both honored and uncomfortable with. He'd never worked with Spartans before — they were the face of the war, he belonged to a group of crazy motherfuckers who landed behind enemy lines in glorified coffins — and he had expected some distant-eyed war hero, a no-nonsense soldier who took the lead.

What he had not expected was the pale-faced, pale-eyed blonde who's temperment was mild-mannered and nothing like the war machine he had expected. What he also hadn't expected was that he'd get so close to her in so little time. He wasn't sure what had enticed him to strike up the friendship — perhaps because she was the odd man out, or perhaps it was the fact that for all of her strength and abilities, she was still human. 

And because she was human, she was trusting him. Trusting him on a level that he suspected she did not with many others, pressing a weight upon him that had bile rising in the back of his throat even as he'd allowed BB to pull up the files. And as he'd read, he'd found his temper flaring, his anger rising until he had finished, too angry for words.

Naomi had belonged to a family, at least for a little while. Then she'd been kidnapped and replaced by a clone who died almost a year later. Naomi'd been taken from her family and experimented on and trained to become the super soldier that she was. 

And all because of one woman.

Doctor Catherine Halsey. Vaz hadn't had much of an opinion on her before — he'd heard little about her previously to being recruited for the expedition and had he had an opinion before that leaned towards sympathy, it dropped beyond sympathy and rested somewhere at loathing.

That bitch. No — that monster. How could she do that? There were boundaries that weren't meant to be crossed, even in war-time. It pissed him off even more just thinking about it, thinking about what Naomi had gone through.

Vaz stopped his angry pacing in his cabin. Shit. Naomi.

She'd been surprisingly calm after he'd told her, blank and deflecting the sympathy of Mal and Devereaux and himself. It wasn't like they could mean it on a truly genuine level — they didn't know the pain she'd been through. Osman had been through it too, if only for a little while. Her body had begun to reject things after a certain point, and Vaz wasn't sure if he should've considered her lucky or not.

Nobody's lucky when that stuff happens. It's sick. What bothered him more than the idea of what Naomi had gone through was the way that she reacted — no anger, no sorrow. It was eerie, and a part of him wondered if that was the Spartan way of dealing with things — lock it away. Even so, it wasn't healthy.

A knock on his cabin door yanked Vaz from his thoughts and he blinked before turning. "It's open," he called, and his eyes locked with pale blue when it opened. Standing in the doorway in her fatigues, Naomi looked almost uncertain, though it disappeared as she said, 

"I wanted to thank you."

Vaz decided to play stupid. "For what?"

Naomi's gaze said it all, even as she replied, "For telling me."

Vaz frowned. "You shouldn't be thanking me," he said, passing a hand over his face, fingertips sliding over his scar. 

"But I am." Naomi told him and then turned to leave, stopping when he called her name. "Yes?"

"Are you okay?" Vaz hesitated, catching the faint look of confusion before he continued, "What I mean is...how can you be okay with all of that? Of what that...that—"

What that monster did to you.

Naomi blinked once, twice, then shifted. Usually impassive, her expression was that of faint discomfort before it disappeared. "It happened," she answered quietly, "and it's over with. There's no need for me to—"

"Bullshit," Vaz snapped, and Naomi's eyes widened. "You can't tell me this doesn't bother you. It should bother you." Naomi didn't respond, and in the silence that followed, Vaz realized that it did bother her; it was just a matter of not showing it. For all her strength and abilities, as she stood in the doorway, staring at the carpet, Vaz could see her as little more than a child wanting her mother.

A mother she couldn't remember, and a shattered image of a woman that she had once thought of as her mother. Sympathy engulfed his anger, and guilt threatened to drown him. "Naomi, I—"

"I'm a soldier," she said, "I do what must be done. It doesn't matter how I feel about it."

"Bullshit," he answered again, "of course it does. You're human, Naomi. You've got the same rights as anyone and she took them away from you. You had no say; no choice. Aren't you angry?" Maybe he wanted her to say yes, to admit that she was hurting — he wanted her to admit to something so that he could help.

"Thank-you," Naomi said at last, and Vaz blinked. "Thank-you."


End file.
